String Stability and a Delay-Based Spacing Policy for Vehicle Platoons Subject to Disturbances

• Published in: IEEE transactions on automatic control Vol. 62; no. 9; pp. 4376 - 4391
• Main Authors: Besselink, Bart, Johansson, Karl H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.09.2017
• Subjects: Cascaded systems; Engines; Interconnected systems; Lead; Roads; Space vehicles; Stability criteria; Stability of nonlinear systems; String stability; Vehicle platoons
• ISSN: 0018-9286; 1558-2523; 2334-3303; 1558-2523
• DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2017.2682421

A novel delay-based spacing policy for the control of vehicle platoons is introduced together with a notion of disturbance string stability. The delay-based spacing policy specifies the desired intervehicular distance between vehicles and guarantees that all vehicles track the same spatially varying reference velocity profile, as is for example required for heavy-duty vehicles driving over hilly terrain. Disturbance string stability is a notion of string stability of vehicle platoons subject to external disturbances on all vehicles that guarantees that perturbations do not grow unbounded as they propagate through the platoon. Specifically, a control design approach in the spatial domain is presented that achieves tracking of the desired spacing policy and guarantees disturbance string stability with respect to a spatially varying reference velocity. The results are illustrated by means of simulations.